The Columbus Project
The subject matter of his work turned toward the rapidly approaching 500th anniversary in 1992 of Christopher Columbus, and his arrival in North America. He found in this event, a rich source for a discussion on the nature of culture, as well as revisions and versions of history. He created at this time,(1989–1992) a body of work entitled The Columbus Project. Its first stage had exhibition venues in Peterborough, Ontario at both ArtSpace (curated by Shelagh Young), and also the Art Gallery of Peterborough. The second phase of the Columbus Project was an exhibition at The Power Plant in Toronto, curated by Richard Rhodes entitled the Columbus Boat. The exhibition continued on to venues in Italy and the United States. Beam's imagery for the Columbus Project was cross-culturally vast, and contained the primary images of Columbus, and Native peoples, but also images of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Abraham Lincoln, Italian Christian iconography, diverse animal species, self portraits and technology (stop lights, rockets). There were two sculptural elements, Voyage a partial reconstruction of the Santa Maria, and the Ampulleta, a 6-foot-tall (1.8 m) hourglass, with one obstructive stone within the sand, as well as several installations, and a video performance of Beam in the Dominican Republic, making a representational graveyard on the beaches where the landing could have taken place.
In 1992 Carl Beam and Ann Beam built an adobe house on Manitoulin Island. "Their adobe house became to a certain extent, a large scale project which evolved naturally out of their earlier experiences with Native American pottery and the building vernacular of the American southwest." Their life experience was incorporated in his exhibition Living in Mother Earth, and her exhibition Sub-division Suite/Earth Builder's Narrative.
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“These were the sounds that issued from the wigwams of this country before Columbus was born; they have not yet died away; and, with remarkably few exceptions, the language of their forefathers is still copious enough for them. I felt that I stood, or rather lay, as near to the primitive man of America, that night, as any of its discoverers ever did.”
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